[gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Grant]

I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.

- Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 12:28:44 -0800
Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:

> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
> loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
> 
> - Grant
> 

claws-mail

It takes some getting used to as all the nice
cute gui stuff is not present. It sends and receives mail, does a very
good job of filtering, is somewhat passable with rendering html mail
(and absolutely refuses to generate it). Everything else that bloats
mail clients is absent.

It goes without saying that under no circumstances must you even
consider using kdepim

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Michael Mol]

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 3:28 PM, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
> loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.

I still stick with Thunderbird or Evolution, myself. Once upon a time,
I used Balsa, though. You might look at that.

If you're already building KDE, KMail was decent.

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Alecks Gates]

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I've never used it, but I've heard good things about Sylpheed.  I'm using
Evolution now and it's nearly the opposite of lightweight, but I love its
integration into GNOME 3.
On Feb 18, 2012 3:30 PM, "Grant" <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:

> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
> loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
>
> - Grant
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Michael Mol]

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 3:36 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 12:28:44 -0800
> Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
>> loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
>> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
>>
>> - Grant
>>
>
> claws-mail
>
> It takes some getting used to as all the nice
> cute gui stuff is not present. It sends and receives mail, does a very
> good job of filtering, is somewhat passable with rendering html mail
> (and absolutely refuses to generate it). Everything else that bloats
> mail clients is absent.
>
> It goes without saying that under no circumstances must you even
> consider using kdepim

Yeah, I should probably add a disclaimer: I haven't seriously used KDE
since before either KDE3 or GNOME 2 came out...

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Grant]

>> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
>> loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
>> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
>>
>> - Grant
>>
>
> claws-mail
>
> It takes some getting used to as all the nice
> cute gui stuff is not present. It sends and receives mail, does a very
> good job of filtering, is somewhat passable with rendering html mail
> (and absolutely refuses to generate it). Everything else that bloats
> mail clients is absent.
>
> It goes without saying that under no circumstances must you even
> consider using kdepim

Thank you all.  Loving claws-mail so far.

- Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Alex Schuster]

Michael Mol writes:

> If you're already building KDE, KMail was decent.

Yes. It was.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:26:42 +0100
Alex Schuster <wonko@wonkology.org> wrote:

> Michael Mol writes:
> 
> > If you're already building KDE, KMail was decent.
> 
> Yes. It was.
> 
> 	Wonko
> 

How true.

kmail jumped the shark at 4.3, jumped the couch at 4.4 and everything
since has been a descent into madness.

A classic case of what not to do and "second project syndrome".
I'll bet CS profs will be using it soon as a example case of how
projects can lose focus and die.

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Grant]

>>> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
>>> loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
>>> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
>>>
>>> - Grant
>>>
>>
>> claws-mail
>>
>> It takes some getting used to as all the nice
>> cute gui stuff is not present. It sends and receives mail, does a very
>> good job of filtering, is somewhat passable with rendering html mail
>> (and absolutely refuses to generate it). Everything else that bloats
>> mail clients is absent.
>>
>> It goes without saying that under no circumstances must you even
>> consider using kdepim
>
> Thank you all.  Loving claws-mail so far.
>
> - Grant

claws-mail is great.  I tried postler too but it wouldn't work right.

- Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Michael Trausch]

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I liked Claws when I used it before. If you really want lightweight,
though, try mutt, which is a terminal-based mail program that supports
OpenPGP and IMAP.

There is also a new option, but it is written in Ruby and is therefore not
lightweight. But it is also a terminal client and allegedly is better than
Mutt, at least in the eyes of those who wrote it. Ruby people ted to be
hyperbolic, but it probably at least merits a try. I do not, however,
remember its name.

--
Sent from my Ice Cream Sandwich-powered HTC G2
Please excuse any typos.
On Feb 18, 2012 3:32 PM, "Grant" <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:

> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
> loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
>
> - Grant
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Grant]

> I liked Claws when I used it before. If you really want lightweight, though,
> try mutt, which is a terminal-based mail program that supports OpenPGP and
> IMAP.
>
> There is also a new option, but it is written in Ruby and is therefore not
> lightweight. But it is also a terminal client and allegedly is better than
> Mutt, at least in the eyes of those who wrote it. Ruby people ted to be
> hyperbolic, but it probably at least merits a try. I do not, however,
> remember its name.

I used mutt for a while but when I switched to thunderbird I got way more done.

- Grant


>> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
>> loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
>> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
>>
>> - Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[ny6p01]

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 12:28:44PM -0800, Grant wrote:
> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
> loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
> 
> - Grant
> 

I like mutt. Takes some work getting everything working, but well worth it,
IMO. For an X application, I have tried Pan and like it pretty well. I
always found Tbird too bloated for my taste.

Terry

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Mick]

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On Sunday 19 Feb 2012 03:09:28 ny6p01@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 12:28:44PM -0800, Grant wrote:
> > I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
> > loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
> > thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
> > 
> > - Grant
> 
> I like mutt. Takes some work getting everything working, but well worth it,
> IMO. For an X application, I have tried Pan and like it pretty well. I
> always found Tbird too bloated for my taste.

I tried (every now and then) to set up mutt, but have failed to make it work 
as I would like to with gpg and s/mime certificates.  Perhaps if I had more 
time to spend to configure it I would make it work as I want it.

Meanwhile, I've frozen kdepim at 4.4 but I fear that I may have to kiss it 
good bye for good.  I'm waiting to see if the 
http://www.trinitydesktop.org/about.php will offer something that I can switch 
to as a KDEPIM suite only (I don't use the full KDE desktop, just selected 
applications).

Last time I looked Pan was a newsreader, are you saying that it also works as 
a mail client?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:40:48 -0800
Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:

> >>> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and
> >>> I'm loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
> >>> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
> >>>
> >>> - Grant
> >>>
> >>
> >> claws-mail
> >>
> >> It takes some getting used to as all the nice
> >> cute gui stuff is not present. It sends and receives mail, does a
> >> very good job of filtering, is somewhat passable with rendering
> >> html mail (and absolutely refuses to generate it). Everything else
> >> that bloats mail clients is absent.
> >>
> >> It goes without saying that under no circumstances must you even
> >> consider using kdepim
> >
> > Thank you all.  Loving claws-mail so far.
> >
> > - Grant
> 
> claws-mail is great.  I tried postler too but it wouldn't work right.


How are you finding it's calendar features? I find them quite pathetic
actually but I put up with it as the alternative is sunbird or
something equally bloated


-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

[gentoo-user] Re: alternative to thunderbird?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2012-02-18, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:

> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
> loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.

mutt

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: alternative to thunderbird?

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 02/19/12 11:02, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2012-02-18, Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys) and I'm
>> loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
>> thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
> 
> mutt
> 

I loved mutt, but "search in subfolders" is really not an optional feature.

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Fuzz]

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On Sat, 2012-02-18 at 20:30 -0500, Michael Trausch wrote:

> I liked Claws when I used it before. If you really want lightweight,
> though, try mutt, which is a terminal-based mail program that supports
> OpenPGP and IMAP.
> 
> There is also a new option, but it is written in Ruby and is therefore
> not lightweight. But it is also a terminal client and allegedly is
> better than Mutt, at least in the eyes of those who wrote it. Ruby
> people ted to be hyperbolic, but it probably at least merits a try. I
> do not, however, remember its name.
> 
> --
> Sent from my Ice Cream Sandwich-powered HTC G2
> Please excuse any typos.
> 
> 
> On Feb 18, 2012 3:32 PM, "Grant" <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>         I just switched from firefox to chromium (thanks to you guys)
>         and I'm
>         loving it.  What would you recommend for getting away from
>         thunderbird?  I'm looking for something simple and minimal.
>         
>         - Grant
>         
It's called Sup[1].  I just found it myself, and while it looks good the
Ruby is putting me off, as well.  I will try it soon.

[1] http://sup.rubyforge.org/

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Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Jorge Martínez López]

Hi!

I might be a little bit on the radical side, but with seeing the whole
KDEPIM debacle I migrated to GNOME 3 and Evolution. It took me some
time to get used to it but I like it.

Of course, YMMV.

Greetings,

-- 
Jorge Martínez López <jorgeml@gmail.com> http://www.jorgeml.net
      Google Talk / XMPP: jorgeml@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:11:07 +0100
Jorge Martínez López <jorgeml@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> I might be a little bit on the radical side, but with seeing the whole
> KDEPIM debacle I migrated to GNOME 3 and Evolution. It took me some
> time to get used to it but I like it.


No, I wouldn't say that's radical. I would say that is common sense.

A core piece of KDE didn't work for you, and you need that core piece
to work right. You probably need and want to work in a consistent DE
also.

So, the thing to do is to move to something that does work. Being that
you need a complete DE, you tried out the first available option -
Gnome.

And you found that worked for you.

I'm a classic Gnome-hater myself, but I can't find the error in that
logic


-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:33:24 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> > I might be a little bit on the radical side, but with seeing the whole
> > KDEPIM debacle I migrated to GNOME 3 and Evolution. It took me some
> > time to get used to it but I like it.  

> No, I wouldn't say that's radical. I would say that is common sense.
> 
> A core piece of KDE didn't work for you, and you need that core piece
> to work right.

I wouldn't call KDEPIM a core piece of KDE. If it were core, it probably
wouldn't have been allowed to get into the state it is in.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Linux like wigwam. No windows, no gates, Apache inside.

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Re: [gentoo-user] alternative to thunderbird?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:24:37 +0000
Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:

> On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:33:24 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> 
> > > I might be a little bit on the radical side, but with seeing the
> > > whole KDEPIM debacle I migrated to GNOME 3 and Evolution. It took
> > > me some time to get used to it but I like it.  
> 
> > No, I wouldn't say that's radical. I would say that is common sense.
> > 
> > A core piece of KDE didn't work for you, and you need that core
> > piece to work right.
> 
> I wouldn't call KDEPIM a core piece of KDE. If it were core, it
> probably wouldn't have been allowed to get into the state it is in.
 

Let me elaborate. Not so much a core piece of KDE itself so that
everything else needs it to work, more a core piece in that the average
user feels the DE is severely neutered without it.

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

[gentoo-user] Re: alternative to thunderbird?

[walt]

On 02/20/2012 01:33 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:11:07 +0100
> Jorge Martínez López <jorgeml@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi!
>>
>> I might be a little bit on the radical side, but with seeing the whole
>> KDEPIM debacle I migrated to GNOME 3 and Evolution. It took me some
>> time to get used to it but I like it.
> 
> 
> No, I wouldn't say that's radical. I would say that is common sense.
> 
> A core piece of KDE didn't work for you, and you need that core piece
> to work right. You probably need and want to work in a consistent DE
> also.
> 
> So, the thing to do is to move to something that does work. Being that
> you need a complete DE, you tried out the first available option -
> Gnome.
> 
> And you found that worked for you.
> 
> I'm a classic Gnome-hater myself, but I can't find the error in that
> logic

Actually I loved kde2 and hated gnome1, but my affections started shifting
when kde3 and gnome2 stabilized.

A month or two ago I thought gnome3 had stabilized enough that I updated
my everyday gnome2 work machine to ~x86, which includes a mostly-gnome3
environment.

Last week I decided to regress to x86/gnome2 because there are just a few
things that almost-but-not-quite work in gnome3, and I just can't/won't
function without them.  

Something as trivial as double-clicking on a date in the gnome calendar
applet no longer opens the calendar function of evolution.  What a dumb
fscking stupid regression for a major DE to tolerate when it would be so
simple to make it work like it already does in gnome2.  I really think
I could probably hack together a patch by myself, the code is so simple,
but I can't see any good reason to waste my time on it.

Likewise for debugging the kdepim mess when it was already working well
in the old kde.  What ARE they thinking?  Reminds me of our US Congress,
all advertising and no product.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: alternative to thunderbird?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:56:31 -0800
walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:

> Likewise for debugging the kdepim mess when it was already working
> well in the old kde.  What ARE they thinking?  Reminds me of our US
> Congress, all advertising and no product.

kdepim devs are just making a simple classic mistake that's
been made over and over and over again. Developers do not learn from
history, every time this mistake is made the team doing it thinks *they*
will be different.

This is their second big project - the most dangerous one a dev will
ever work on. Frederick P. Brooks has it all covered since the 70s.


-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: alternative to thunderbird?

[Grant]

>> Likewise for debugging the kdepim mess when it was already working
>> well in the old kde.  What ARE they thinking?  Reminds me of our US
>> Congress, all advertising and no product.
>
> kdepim devs are just making a simple classic mistake that's
> been made over and over and over again. Developers do not learn from
> history, every time this mistake is made the team doing it thinks *they*
> will be different.

What is that classic mistake?  Is it the shark jumping thing?

- Grant


> This is their second big project - the most dangerous one a dev will
> ever work on. Frederick P. Brooks has it all covered since the 70s.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: alternative to thunderbird?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:26:01 -0800
Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:

> >> Likewise for debugging the kdepim mess when it was already working
> >> well in the old kde.  What ARE they thinking?  Reminds me of our US
> >> Congress, all advertising and no product.
> >
> > kdepim devs are just making a simple classic mistake that's
> > been made over and over and over again. Developers do not learn from
> > history, every time this mistake is made the team doing it thinks
> > *they* will be different.
> 
> What is that classic mistake?  Is it the shark jumping thing?

No, the mistake is the mistakes that are always made on the second
big project. You'd have to read "The Mythical ManMonth" to truly do it
justice (it's a really good book for developers btw), but in a nutshell
it goes like this:

For your first big project, you will proceed very slowly and carefully
and not take on too much, as you know you know nothing. You will
probably make a project that does one thing and does a decent job of it.

Enter the second project. Buoyed by the success of the first, most devs
will try and build something that is waaaaaaaaaay beyond their
capabilities - I mean, how hard can it be right? It will over-reach, be
unbuildable and timeframe estimates will be bat-shit crazy insane.

The attrition rate of second big projects is rather large. 

Enter the third project. Humbled by the experience of the second and
still feeling quietly (and realistically) confident by the first, most
devs will settle down to something useful, of wide scope and still
achievable.

This same rule seems to apply to almost every project a bunch of humans
could tackle.

So back to KDEPIM. The state of that project, the amount of bugs it
has, the attitude of the devs, the state of the migrator scripts, the
way Akonadi can suddenly go nuclear on you and eat your kittens, the
mysterious disappearing mails from imap stores, and more, all of these
things point straight to second project syndrome. The devs bit off way
more than they can chew and now it's biting them back.

But it can be fixed. All it needs is a smart leader with the balls to
nuke all the crap code, put up with the inevitable whinging, and get
the project back on track with a set of realistic goals. This might
well mean chucking all of Akonadi away and admitting to themselves that
they must stick with lots of flat files for a while longer.

> 
> - Grant
> 
> 
> > This is their second big project - the most dangerous one a dev will
> > ever work on. Frederick P. Brooks has it all covered since the 70s.
> 



-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: alternative to thunderbird?

[Grant]

>> > kdepim devs are just making a simple classic mistake that's
>> > been made over and over and over again. Developers do not learn from
>> > history, every time this mistake is made the team doing it thinks
>> > *they* will be different.
>>
>> What is that classic mistake?  Is it the shark jumping thing?
>
> No, the mistake is the mistakes that are always made on the second
> big project. You'd have to read "The Mythical ManMonth" to truly do it
> justice (it's a really good book for developers btw), but in a nutshell
> it goes like this:
>
> For your first big project, you will proceed very slowly and carefully
> and not take on too much, as you know you know nothing. You will
> probably make a project that does one thing and does a decent job of it.
>
> Enter the second project. Buoyed by the success of the first, most devs
> will try and build something that is waaaaaaaaaay beyond their
> capabilities - I mean, how hard can it be right? It will over-reach, be
> unbuildable and timeframe estimates will be bat-shit crazy insane.
>
> The attrition rate of second big projects is rather large.
>
> Enter the third project. Humbled by the experience of the second and
> still feeling quietly (and realistically) confident by the first, most
> devs will settle down to something useful, of wide scope and still
> achievable.
>
> This same rule seems to apply to almost every project a bunch of humans
> could tackle.

Brilliant explanation.  Thank you for taking the time to write this out.

- Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: alternative to thunderbird?

[Peter Humphrey]

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On Wednesday 22 February 2012 20:14:05 Alan McKinnon wrote:

> You'd have to read "The Mythical ManMonth" to truly do it justice (it's a
> really good book for developers btw).

That book used to be required reading in my coding days (70s and 80s).

On our projects we used to say: the first 50% of the project takes the first 
90% of the time, and the second 50% takes the other 90%.

Then we'd go out to tender when the project was cancelled at board level. 
(This was in the electricity supply industry.)

As Alan said, in software development nobody ever learns the lessons they 
should.

-- 
Rgds
Peter		Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: alternative to thunderbird?

[Juan Diego Tascón]

+1 for sup

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 7:21 PM, Peter Humphrey
<peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org> wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 February 2012 20:14:05 Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
>
>
>> You'd have to read "The Mythical ManMonth" to truly do it justice (it's a
>
>> really good book for developers btw).
>
>
>
> That book used to be required reading in my coding days (70s and 80s).
>
>
>
> On our projects we used to say: the first 50% of the project takes the first
> 90% of the time, and the second 50% takes the other 90%.
>
>
>
> Then we'd go out to tender when the project was cancelled at board level.
> (This was in the electricity supply industry.)
>
>
>
> As Alan said, in software development nobody ever learns the lessons they
> should.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Rgds
>
> Peter Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23
>
>